Fukushima Like Chernobyl

Medical tests on children living in three towns near the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant found 45 percent of those surveyed suffered low-level thyroid radiation exposure, Japan’s government said in a statement.

While the statement didn’t comment on the source of the contamination, the announcement follows reports of radioactive material found in food after radiation leaks from the meltdown of three reactors at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant.

Not as bad as Chernobyl, no immediate risk. The Japanese public is increasingly frightened and angry, as authorities are shown to have minimized and covered up the extent of the disaster. Politics trumps science, there as well as here. We have hard choices to make if we are to cut our carbon emissions, but nuclear is not the way. The benefits last a few decades, the consequences are with us for thousands of years.